I’m guessing that your organization is still talking about how to implement old technology. You are holding meetings, creating working groups, forming committees. All based around implementing something that still seems new to you, but in reality is pretty darn old!
“Old technology? No way!” you say. Wanna bet? Here’s a short list of technology that gets discussed in libraries right now, with origin/founding/first appeared dates (yay for Wikipedia!):
- Twitter – 7 years old (founded 2006)
- Facebook – 9 years old (founded 2004)
- ebooks – 42 years old (we’ll say 1971, though prototypes and patents go all the way back to the 1940s!)
- ebook readers – 15 years old (1998, probably earlier)
- QR Codes – 19 years old (created in 1994)
- PC with OS’s newer than XP – 7 years old (Vista came out in 2006, though no one actually used it)
- Apple Mac – 29 years old (Came out in 1984. I’ll guess many people remember the commercial, but haven’t actually used one)
- Cell phones – 40 years old (First call made in 1973)
- smart phones – 12 years old (started appearing in 2001)
- text messaging – 21 years old (created in 1992)
- IM/Chat messaging – 25 years old (IRC appeared in 1988)
- wifi – 25 years old (appeared in 1988)
- RFID – 30 years old (first patent in 1983)
- Youtube – 8 years old (founded in 2005)
- mp3 files for music – 19 years old (appeared in 1994)
- digital media labs – 93 years old (ok, this one’s really hard to date. DMLs are really just small recording studios, which have been around in one form or another since at least the 1920s)
- hackerspaces – 47 years old (This is another hard one to date. The Chaos Computer Club, an early hackerspace, was founded in 1981. But I think you could put the Homebrew Computer Club in this list, started in 1975, which helped spawn Apple. And my dad and my uncle Bob have had workshops in their basements with all sorts of crazy machinery since I’ve been alive. So I’m dating these at 47 years old 🙂
- Cloud computing – 63 years old (There have been mainframes/dumb terminals since the 1950s, which could be argued to be early cloud-based computing)
- 3D Printing – 29 years old (the first working 3d printer appeared in 1984)
So I ask again – are you talking about old technology … like it’s new technology? Do you have staff who can’t use ebooks, are wary of smartphones or text messaging reference, or look at you crazy when you introduce the concept of a hackerspace to them? Is your library/city/governing board still wary of new-fangled social media tools like Facebook or Cloud computing?
Makes you think, doesn’t it!
Steampunk mobile phone pic by Urban Don